The Bejo Zaden open days went successfully and attracted a large number of visitors from across the world. The carrot symposium stood out, attracting over 500 visitors spread over two days. Carrots have the potential to grow further in the snack assortment and Bejo is developing special tasty and coloured varieties for this. The potato variety Oliver F1 that can be grown directly from the seed in a season also enjoyed a lot of interest. This potato is mainly suitable for small farming companies in Africa, Asia and Central America.
Entrance to the Bejo demo fields
The trusted Bejo assortment with the newest developments were of course represented on the demo fields. New this year was the demo of greenhouse vegetables. Bejo presented varieties of lettuce (regular and organic) in here, as well as courgettes, pickles, tomatoes and peppers. Bejo also demonstrated their bee cultivation and research programme, essential to seed production.
Presentation of onion varieties
Organic innovation
Bejo is working on the further expansion of their organic assortment. Examples are for instance the Hylander, a seeding onion variety bought by many organic growers. Now Bejo also has Boga, the first mildew resistant planting onion variety that is commercially available. Another strong onion variety is the Hysky, strong against fusarium.
Boga and Red Sky are interesting varieties for organic growers
Innovations and striking varieties
New introductions or striking varieties received special attention at the demo fields. In fennel, there was the Bejo Dragon, a variety for spring, summer and autumn cultivation. A fast grower that has round bulbs and showed itself to be strong against summer shot last summer. New in red cabbage is Davaro, a finer size of cabbage with good quality characteristics for the fresh market. The size is between 1.5 and 3 kilograms with around 110 growing days.
Dragon gives round bulbs and is strong again summer shot
Delano is an innovation for broccoli for autumn cultivation. The variety produces tight, round screens with fine buds and has a good shelf life in storage.
Delano has good storage properties
Sprouts are traditionally an important market for Bejo. They developed varieties both for the fresh market and the processing. A strikingly good variety for the late harvest is Hemera, winter hard, and can be harvested from December to March.
Sprouts are an important crop to Bejo
Bejo continues to give its concepts attention; the fresh onion Deliciono, the Coolwrap and kohlrabi varieties. Kohlrabi is mainly popular in Germany. Konon is the most flavourful variety, Kossak is more suitable for the industry and Kolibri is a purple variety. These kohlrabi varieties are also suitable as organic seeds. A newer concept is Krunchelly, a stick of celery. The varieties Balada and Jive were specially developed for this market, these are tasty varieties with long uniform stalks out of which a number of sticks can be cut.
Carrots are one of the most important crops for Bejo. There are varieties and specialties available for both the fresh market and industry. Mokum is growing in popularity, says Danielle Bruin. It is a versatile variety and is the earliest carrot variety and also suitable for A-carrot, carrot and fine industry carrot. The sweet flavour ensures the variety has potential as a snacking carrot.
Konan and the kohlrabi sticks
Last year Bejo introduced Bejo B-Mox, a formula that gives the young crops extra stimulation in the beginning period. It makes the plant less vulnerable and so it can therefore develop better. Robert Schilder says: "The formula helps the plants early on in the growing stages with the development of a good root systems. This benefits the crop until harvest with a healthier crop and better yield as a result - a higher pack-out of up to 10% hasn't been uncommon. These are really good results and I'm happy we can continue to help our customers with this in improving harvesting and controlling company risks."
Carrot varieties are available with B-Mox
B-Mox is always applied in combination with priming and is available in the crops carrot, root parsley and spring onion at the moment. B-Mox is also available for organic seeds this season.